@ Our Community - What can we do to clean up our act?

Now every now and then I get a little fed up with dealing with the amount of trolls we have surrounding our community and just people who go out their way to make your gaming experience a bad one. For instance. If you've ever used the Twitch.tv chat you'll see the countless people bashing, hating, attacking, every little mistake made by any team. It's literally mind blowing to just watch that chat and see the things that are said to players and teams. Team 1 beats Team 2 and now Team 1 is the BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD! And Team 2 is THE WORST TEAM IN THE WORLD and Team 2 should hate themselves /insert 20x's more hateful things. And it's just like.. /facepalm.. That's really it. It makes me facepalm watching the ultimatums thrown out by our community when someone loses a single match in a best of 3. It's like we can't just sit, enjoy the two teams playing each other and whoever was better that day won. Now I know no ones going to be perfect, no ones going to like every team, everyone will always have favorites, and teams they don't like at all. With that being said though I feel like we as a community could do a better job to act a little more professional towards our professional teams and just our community as a whole.

We as a community have been deemed by a lot of people in the gaming world as the "Worst gaming community of all time" and I played XBOX360 Live from Halo2 up till CoD5 and I would honestly have to say I agree. There are more trash talkers, more trolls, and more people strictly out to be assholes in our community then I've ever experienced in any community ever and this bothers me a lot. Even when I smurf the amount of people who instantly play the blame game when something goes wrong, and attack others to validate themselves makes me not want to play this game.

A lot of my real life friends get annoyed when playing LoL as well for this same reason. Granted they can be trash talkers too but for the most part they just want 10/10 people in the game trying hard to win and when someone trolls they get upset which I feel is how a lot of the community feel because I am that way as well. I join up ranked because I want to try hard and win without messing around. I know it's a "game" and games are supposed to be about fun but when playing ranked it's supposed to be "competitive fun" where it's fun to try your hardest and see how well you can do. It can be a real drag to join a game expecting to have people who want to win on your team and it turns out they've just joined up to "Troll" because for some reason as a community we've adopted it as something that's socially acceptable.

Now you'd think that at higher Elo's people wouldn't be trolling as much or the try hard would be separated from the trolls and that's 100% not the case. People troll just as hard at all Elo's. There is no such thing as being stuck in "Elo Hell" because it's just our community. Our community is Elo Hell because even on your best days of playing you can be put in a bad mood from other team mates being jerks and ruining your gaming experience which in turn makes you play worse and more prone to being a troll yourself which just starts a downward spiral of hate in our community.

So what can we do as a community to stop some of this? Stand up to them. Trolling people in this game is essentially Internet bullying and the only way to stop it is to stand up for others who are getting bullied. Use your best judgement when you see someone being trash talked by others and defend those who need defending. Don't sit idly while someone takes a verbal beating from someone else. Stand up for your fellow human being when they're being attacked as if you were in their position you'd want someone to stand up for you. Let's stop the blame game, and start the encouragement game. People will play better if you don't put them down and instead tell them it's okay mistakes happen.

I know even I am guilty of not being the best team player sometimes and it's often because I've lost too many games in a row, gotten trolled myself which put me in a bad mood and I shouldn't of queued up again anyways. I also think that's part of solving the problem. People forcing too many games on themselves in a row without taking a breather to take a step back, relax, watch a tv show, browse reddit, whatever you need to do calm down before jumping into a new game where you're heated and ready to explode on the first person who says anything to you. If we can take care of ourselves when we're having a bad day instead of taking it out on a possible 9 other players we can improve the community. If we stand up for those who are getting bullied and letting the community know that you aren't cool for trolling players, and it's not okay to put people down. Then maybe we can have a better community even if it only gets slightly better it's an improvement I feel League of Legends definitely needs.

The saying "Don't hate the player, hate the game" doesn't apply. Everyone I know loves League as much as I do and it's really the players who make this game not enjoyable most of the time. Riot's done a great job making a great game for us, but we as the community need to clean up our act to enjoy League Of Legends to it's full potential.

Comments

Implement "no tolerance policy" towards people whose sole purpose is to ruin the experience for other players.I've personally stopped playing soloQ, not because I'm a QQ'er, but because I do no longer feel that it is worth it anymore, so many people just join ranked games because their passion is making people angry/frustrated.Also, Riot should threat newcomers and sponsored players equally, I myself experienced that Riot seem to neglect rules when it comes to sponsored players breaking them(none mentioned none forgotten)

Last but not least, our so called "Role Models" should stop being such hypocrites, specially Dyrus.I'm not hating on Dyrus, I used to like his stream and such, but he is one of the worst role models LoL could ever want.Crying about trolls, then ruin games himself intentionally because "I don't care I'm going to Dreamhack/IPL/And such"

Took the words out of my mouth, if we have more oh the ... lol ... "pros" ... acting like mature adults and setting good examples such as NOT trolling NOT talking absolute SHIT on their stream when they get a bad player on their solo queue team, etc. Then we might see a more mature attitude as a whole, I would LOVE for once instead of (insert "pro" gamer's name here) getting mad and talking shit on stream or in chat to whoever is not having a good game instead tell that person to maybe try a little harder think a little longer and encourage him to keep trying.

Nine times out of ten if I get into a game and I fail a couple times like giving a kill or two in lane early or missing a good gank opportunity someone says something and just starts to go off about it, this makes me NOT want to try to win at all instead it makes me feel bad that maybe I am a bad player or something like that either way it is demoralizing after a while and just makes me say "Fuck it!" and then just give up all together.

We need stronger more mature role models in this game to set the example, it will never happen over time but there are too many cocky assholes who brag about being a pro gamer and shit and worry more about their image than actual being good guys and setting the assholes straight.

The ONLY streamer I have ever looked up to was Nico sadly he doesn't stream or even play anymore, he used to actually take his viewrs into matches and teach them how to play better happily I was one of those lucky people who got to learn from someone and hope to carry that on to someone else some day.

I totally agree with you.. I used to play 10-15 games per day and now i am down to few games per week. It is just boring to join games, get trolled and get your mood screwed. So i prefer watching pro games in the 10000 tournaments that are happening and maybe play few games per week instead of having to face these trolls over and over again. We need a much harsher attitude from Riot on this. I can't have someone wishing cancer to everyone in the game and then him getting a 2 day ban. I know that's happening cause i have a friend that does that. Give him 10-15 days ban (for more than 1 bans) and lets see if he will keep doing it... As you said the only way to fight bullies is to stand up to them but Riot must help to that as well...